Whose Companion Cat Are You Dissecting At School Today?

More than 10 million animals in the USA are killed for classroom dissection annually. Unwanted domestic cats are amongst them.

Dissecting cats in classrooms must stop

There is a touching vignette of a story from Castle View High School, Douglas County Schools, Colorado, USA, on the change.org website. This is a quote from the website:

A child who refused to dissect the cat was confronted by the human anatomy teacher in the middle of a lecture. When she still refused, the human anatomy teacher left the classroom unattended, insisting on accompaning the child to the office where she was told to drop the class.

Today, arguably there is no longer a need to cut open a domestic cat in a classroom. When I think about it, it feels wrong. As I say in the title, the cat on the classroom table could well be someone’s lost, loved cat companion. Is there no sensitivity towards cat and caretaker in this process?

Personally, I have a lot of admiration for the girl who refused to participate in the classroom. She showed courage and intelligence. I remember doing biology at school and dissecting animals (no cats I hasten to add). We never gave it a thought. You didn’t in those days (1960s) and children won’t normally. If a young student is ambivalent about the domestic cat  – she has no particular opinion – cutting up the carcass of a dead domestic cat is unlikely to engender a good attitude towards the cat (or animals in general) in adulthood. The impression given is that the domestic cat is disposable; an “object” of little worth to be used as we, humans, see fit. This is not consistent with modern thinking. It is an ideology consistent with the bible’s reference to man’s dominion over animals – very old fashioned. Today there is an urgent need for children, particularly, to respect all animals.

The purpose in dissecting cats is to compare cat and human anatomy. I don’t see sufficient value in that to justify dissecting a cat in a classroom. We are told on the petition website that the president of the National Science Teachers Association has stated that comparative anatomy is out of date and no longer necessary. I can certainly sympathise with that. What purpose can there be? In any case if the value of comparative anatomy is questionable, it can be studied from books or using computer programs.

It isn’t just about the dissection. What happened beforehand? Where do these cats come from? Who is the supplier. Is a dealer buying up cats from shelters? Or are shelters doing deals direct with dealers? I see that Julie Sarff, the lady who wrote the petition, states that animal shelters in Colorado won’t sell animals to supply companies. She also says that the supply companies have had violations under state animal welfare legislation. Where do these animal supply companies get their cats from? Off the streets?

PETA states on their website that the cats “are obtained from animal shelters, pet stores, backyards, and the streets of the U.S. and Mexico.”

PETA also reports that the animal supply companies can engage in acts of animal cruelty such as “the embalming of cats while they were still alive”. Shocking.

If shelters are doing deals, the cats would have to be dealt with differently post-death to other shelter cats, I would have thought. Perhaps they are earmarked before being “euthanised”. Doesn’t doing deals with commercial enterprises undermine the ethos of a shelter, which is to shelter cats by being concerned about their welfare and to find new homes? If cat and animal shelters are involved in this form of dead cat trading it turns them into processing facilities. They are certainly not behaving as intended.

Countries such as Germany, Norway and Sweden don’t require students to dissect animals, Julie Sarff states. I haven’t checked it, but it rings true.

The bottom line is that this is a thing of the past. It is just convenience and commerce that keeps it going. It is time to stop.

12 thoughts on “Whose Companion Cat Are You Dissecting At School Today?”

  1. The author of the best comment will receive an Amazon gift of their choice at Christmas! Please comment as they can add to the article and pass on your valuable experience.
  2. How’s that can of “Fancy Feast” cat food working out for everyone? Chock-full of dissected chickens, dissected fish, dissected pork, beef, or veal.

    Yum yum! You love to pay others to dissect animals for you and even your cats sure do love dissecting things! What’s good for every other animal is just as good for cats!

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  3. After so many years, why would any science labs still be doing this?
    This is the age of animation and simulation.
    Why not a cadaviar? Realistic and already dead. Not a cat that has to be killed.

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      • This really makes kids see cats as objects.

        When I was at school it was catfish and frogs we had to chop up.

        I refused and got an official caution (3 of those and you were expelled) so luckily it didn’t happen again or I would have been changing schools pretty quick.

        Interestingly they had a pickled human baby in a bottle, amongst hundreds of other pickled unborn baby, and that didn’t really bother me but it bothered alot of people because they thought the baby was a person who could see and feel etc. Weird stuff goes on in the name of science.

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  4. Sorry i really cant read this, I’m disgusted this even happens!! Whats wrong with people? This is just teaching Cruelty, The only thing we had a school was frogs which was bad enough.

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  5. Can hardly bear to think or read about it, I was never required to cut anything up at school not even a frog and if I had been I too would have refused come a caning, suspension or even under threat of being expelled I would still have refused, I was an RSPCA Junior Animal Defender then and still am all these years later though now I’m a self motivated senior animal defender. The thought of it makes me feel physically ill.

    Reply

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